Dude, we shouldn't have gotten a Dell!

[lost_soul]

I have a Dell 20 inch monitor that does the following. When you turn it on, it works fine for about five minutes. Then it enters standby mode automatically, though the power LED stays on. You have to power it off or unplug the VGA cable to get it to come back on again, but it will then only stay lit for about three seconds. After that time, it goes back to standby and refuses to display anything. If you turn it on again, it will go to standby again in 3 seconds... and so on and so on

 

If you come back in half an hour, it will work for another five minutes.

 

Any ideas? Somebody on Youtube suggested bad capacitors. Apparently Dell was selling hardware with this problem.

Edited August 14, 2014 by lost_soul

[STiFU]

So Dell is pulling that crap too? I thought it was only Samsung selling timebomb hardware. I am so fed up with that company. It's like they got a two year timer in their hardware. As soon as the warranty is over, problems arise. With my Samsung-harddrives, the SMART values started dropping and my Samsung LCD recently started going crazy as well. Whenever I turn it on, it seems to need a 5-minute-warmup-phase. During that phase the screen flashes on and off at high frequency.

[Bikerdude]

I though monitors, even dell monitors came with a 3yr warranty...?

[STiFU]

Possibly. We have a two-year compulsory warranty here in Germany, so that's why I called it a two-year timer. But my LCD is older than three years anyway.

 

Well as soon as I got my new place, I'll try to get my hands on a second LCD, so the problem with the display is not that bad.

[stumpy]

dell computers have a reputation for catching fire due to lack of fans and/or heat sinks. I had the type of problem you've got with your monitor but with a tv not starting and it turned out to be the capacitors that had failed. Replacing the capacitors made the tv work again.

[Serpentine]

Bad caps are often not really the fault of OEM, or the end brand in this case. Capacitors can be very tricky to produce and the higher end ones sell at a fair premium, while the low quality and generally low spec ones are a lot cheaper, its common for bulk orders to be swapped out for crap/fake versions, they are incredibly well marked, covered and have a lot of well done paperwork. If they're done well, the fakes will easily pass the factory QA as they havent aged and such. However once they're getting constant use that all falls away.

 

A good general overview of these issues is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

 

Then there's this old story, once again - it's easy to see how the poor OEM/vendor selling them has very little idea... before things start going wrong

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/stolen-formula-for-capacitors-causing-computers-to-burn-out-539299.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jun/29/dell-problems-capacitors

 

And a few years ago, some nvidia partners were hit by a massive batch of fake caps on their midrange 7600 boards, failure rates between 30-50% within the first 3 months.

[STiFU]

Interesting. Thanks for the insight Serpentine.

[AluminumHaste]

dell computers have a reputation for catching fire due to lack of fans and/or heat sinks.

 

What? My family has had Dell products for the last 15 years including over 2 dozen laptops and we've never had an issue with them except for 1. That was my brothers 15" Dell Inspiron laptop which would over heat if you left if flat on any surface. Turned out the problem was that the mounting of the fan to the heatsink had come loose after he upgraded the bottom memory module. After repairing that it worked fine.

Now the HP laptops that I had to support while working at one of their call centers, omg pieces of shit!

[Glyph Seeker]

Ah here's the thing.

 

In the UK - you ONLY get that wonderful, amazing 3 year next day swap out guarantee... If you buy from Dell direct - or argue til you're blue on the phone like my Dad did on my behalf.

 

My Ultrasharp has been wonderful - but until it was replaced it had a stuck PIXEL right in the MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN. Yeesh.

 

My next monitor will be a 24" HP IPS one - £300 but has kickass customer service if you buy direct.

[Serpentine]

My next monitor will be a 24" HP IPS one - £300 but has kickass customer service if you buy direct.

Yeah I have a ZR24w, it's a lovely IPS display and the 3 year on-site, next day business support is very impressive. My only complaint is that of the corner glow, but thats a problem with all e-IPS, Dell hide it with that extremely grainy antiglare; while the antiglare on this is good, it doesn't hide it as much. I'll prolly try RMA it with that lovely support if they bring out a new model with a better panel, might as well try my luck.